Zuckerberg has blown 77 billion – enough money to revitalize entire countries – on an idea so overwhelmingly, obviously stupid that I have never once heard anyone, from the Thanksgiving avuncular table to the most wretched depths of social media, say they liked it or even tried it. He was so sure that it would revolutionize the world that he renamed his extremely famous company after it. And now he's on to the next thing that he's so very, very sure about.
The world needs direction from sober people who aim to improve the human condition, not the whims of a handful of billionaire princelings who absolutely, positively cannot be dissuaded from failing at unprecedented scale while chasing their own vainglory off the edge of a cliff.
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Guess an #introduction is in order. Not sure I ever did one for my first instance, whoops.
Hi, my name is James an I've moved from an instance that is closing down soon.
I'm absolutely queer 
but working a boring office job in Germany, trying to remind ppl at work that personal data needs protection and that genAI came fresh out of pandora's box and does not belong in their daily job.
In my free time I #write fic, #draw digital art and #read a lot of books, mostly #scifi. I play a handful of computer games like #GW2. I watch a lot of tv shows and love Star Trek 
and Doctor Who.
I love #space, #nature, #cats and #photography (although my photos are just taken with my phone). I post them mostly on my Pixelfed account.
Guess that's it for now. I probably forgot a lot of stuff that people write into introductions, but feel free to ask x)
Google commemorated this year’s International Day of Persons with Disabilities earlier this week by publishing a blog post in which the company detailed “7 ways we’re making Android more accessible.Steven Aquino (Curb Cuts)
I have developed a fool proof system to not forget clothes in the washer at night
1) turn on lights in laundry room
2) load clothes
3) forget about both clothes and light
4) at bedtime, husband sees light on downstairs and furiously demands to know why lights have been left on
5) as husband starts to stomp off to turn off lights yell “oh while you’re down there can you switch the laundry?”
Solved.
Provided to YouTube by Symphonic DistributionMy Last Fantasy · SpritelyLife's Not A Novel (but I sure want it to be)℗ 2023 SpritelyReleased on: 2023-01-27Pro...YouTube
Have you ever had to call someone by your own first name?
My first name is very rare, so I’ve only met one person with the same name in my whole life, but I’m curious about other people’s experiences.
I also wonder about people in romantic relationships that have the same first name. That must feel weird 🤔
I just read something about being around people whose name is your deadname and how that’s a surreal experience. That’s so interesting!
Boosts and comments are welcome 🤗
I'm a blind person, so this is even worse for me.
My name is neither particularly common nor particularly rare. I've had classmates who shared my first name back in primary school, and that was a very annoying experience. I never knew whether I was the one called.
I’ve been diving into the Mona 7 upgrade controversy, specifically the requirement for Mona 6 Pro users to buy a "Bridge Upgrade" to Pro Max ($10) in the old app just to unlock the *privilege* of buying the Ultra One-Time Purchase ($20) in the new app.
While a developer is absolutely allowed to release a new App ID and charge for it (that is standard practice), this specific "Bridge Purchase" mechanism appears to violate Apple's App Store Review Guidelines in two critical ways.
If you are frustrated by this, here is the technical breakdown of why this flow is likely non-compliant:
1. Violation of Guideline 3.1.1 (In-App Purchase Mechanics)
The core rule of IAP is that purchases must be for content/features *consumed within the app*.
Guideline 3.1.1 states: "Apps may not use their own mechanisms to unlock content or functionality... Apps and their metadata may not include buttons, external links, or other calls to action that direct customers to purchasing mechanisms other than in-app purchase."
By forcing users to buy an upgrade in Mona 6 (App A) specifically to unlock a price tier in Mona 7 (App B), the developer is effectively selling a "coupon" or "license key" for a different app.
* The $10 spent in Mona 6 is not primarily for Mona 6 features (since the user is abandoning that app for Mona 7); it is a fee paid in App A to modify the behavior of App B.
* Apple historically rejects apps that sell access to other apps. The "Loyalty Discount" should be native to Mona 7 (e.g., detecting the Mona 6 receipt), not gatekept behind a fresh paywall in a deprecated binary.
2. Violation of Guideline 2.3 (Accurate Metadata & Misleading Terms)
This is the "Bait and Switch" clause.
Guideline 2.3.1 states: "Customers should know what they’re getting when they download or buy your app... Don’t include any hidden or undocumented features in your app."
When users bought Mona 6 Pro as a "One-Time Purchase," the reasonable expectation was a perpetual license for that major version. By creating a *new* tier (Pro Max) and retroactively declaring it the *only* tier eligible for future loyalty benefits, the developer has obfuscated the value of the original purchase.
* Forcing a user to upgrade a "dead" product (Mona 6) to access the "live" product (Mona 7) is a "Junk Fee" structure that confuses the purchase flow and misleads users about the true cost of the upgrade ($11.99 original + $10 bridge + $20 new app = $41.99 total, vs the advertised $20).
The Bottom Line:
The developer has every right to charge $20 for Mona 7. They do NOT have the right to force you to spend $10 in Mona 6 to "unlock" that button.
If this flow remains, it sets a dangerous precedent where developers can tax users in legacy apps to gatekeep access to new ones. The "Loyalty Offer" should be available to *all* paid Mona 6 users, or the upgrade path should be handled entirely within Mona 7.
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The similarities between #accessibility and #cybersecurity continue to amaze me.
These are both areas of standards, recommendations, legal precedents etc. that SHOULD, in theory, give companies the tools, as well as the insentive, to do what their clients/customers need them to do.
Is that the reality? Sadly, often, no it isn't. I just saw a renowned voice in the cybersecurity space repost a post that essentially states that if the infraction is cheaper/more lucrative than the fine, companies will choose the fine every single time. Frustrating, innit?
So what if I say the exact same thing is true for #accessibility and that the majority of GUI-based cybersecurity tools are not #accessible enough to be productive?
Here's a callout to #cybersecurity vendors. Are you going to fix this, or be a hypocrite? :) #tech
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🚫 Watch out! #Google starts sharing all your messages with your employer.
👉🏼 More on Forbes: forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/20…
I don't think people are ready for what's coming: Bots that look and talk like real humans, which can actually control things in the real world. Imagine the unbelievable mess it's going to create in our society when we can't tell who is real anymore. We need to be thinking about these problems now, because the technology isn't far off. I've already had conversations that were in the "uncanny valley" where I wasn't sure if who I was speaking to was a bot. Those came and went, replaced by ones that actually crossed over the valley and sound real. Next up: "live" video.
producthunt.com/products/truge…
TruGen AI delivers hyper-realistic Video Agents that see, hear, remember, and act in real time - transforming conversations into natural, human-like interactions. Scalable, secure, and API-first, it adapts across industries and languages.Product Hunt
Recycling is a toxic lie.
Big brands and petrochemical corporations keep selling the public a convenient and comforting story to hide the hard truth: they simply have to STOP PRODUCING SO MUCH PLASTIC.
#PlasticsTreaty #plasticpollution
#recycling
Martin Parr: the photographer’s career in pictures
theguardian.com/artanddesign/g…
A look back at the career of Martin Parr who has died at the age of 73Martin Parr (The Guardian)
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That in turn seems, according to html5-parser documentation (not yet taken the time to confirm this myself), to cause *both* lxml and html5-parser to dynamically link libxml2 so that they can share the same C-level data structures.
Effectively, html5-parser seems to rely on internal implementation details of lxml in ways that completely break Python packaging. I get it gives a performance advantage, but at a steep cost.
I don't want to be too mean about this... Calibre is almost half a million lines of code, and has been around longer than Python 3 has. But also? I'm trying to point out that a large part of how we archive and read electronic books without fear of retroactive censorship is load-bearing on those five hundred thousand lines.
That is not sustainable, and not something that ever should have been placed on one person's shoulders.
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@feld @mirabilos It's not even the hype, a language might need that in a way.
It's more like:
- Cargo and the packaging ecosystem is a disaster, stuff like Tarmageddon will probably stay an exploitable vulnerability for years even on the open-source side of things.
- I've had to edit parts of the Rust stdlib once… urgh, I hope I never look in there again.
- They love citing gccrs as "hey it'll be there soon as an alternative!" while they've been at it for years and are still at doing core (so stdlib… yeah that doesn't seems soon): rust-gcc.github.io/2025/11/17/…
feld likes this.
Photographer Martin Parr dies aged 73
bbc.com/news/articles/cg5m0mnv…
Parr rose to prominence in the mid 1980s, his colourful images capturing British life.Noor Nanji (BBC News)
While checking my available updates in the App Store, I was initially impressed that the Libby app was only 3.1 MB.
Then I remembered my experience of actually using it and realised that a 31 or even 310 MB native app would probably be preferable to their overly verbose web container thing.
In some web platform circles, there's a push for a move away from walled garden distribution methods like the App Store and native apps in general.
Broadly, I think progressive web apps (PWAs) should be easier to distribute and install. And Apple should definitely do more to make those a viable option on iOS.
Unfortunately, purely web-based apps are currently not able to take advantage of several important #accessibility features, primary among them the ability to add actions to elements (e.g. for the VoiceOver rotor).
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@jcsteh @pitermach It's a start. It's not quite the same, given that for privacy reasons it can only invoke concrete controls in the DOM rather than arbitrary event handlers, and it's not clear how those controls can be adequately hidden from SR users without disadvantaging other audiences.
When I most recently discussed it with a member of the ARIA WG and a screen reader engineer (in October), it seemed there were quite a few open questions about the relevant side effects too, like focus movement and restoration for e.g. actions that are toggles or open a piece of UI that can later be closed.
But as I say, it's a start and I'm hopeful it will make a difference. I like web apps, both as a developer and a user.
**Acceptance Criteria**
- You will accept me as I am
- I have inherent worth apart from what I do or don't do for this Jira ticket
2025 Video Game Accessibility Recap - Access-Ability
In this 45 minute video, I recap EVERY bit of video game accessibility news from 2025.
This video was a mammoth project, I hope folks check it out.
Text: access-ability.uk/2025/12/05/2…
Video: youtube.com/watch?v=sO76gjNPD5…
2025 is drawing to a close, and with it my 6th year of covering accessibility in the video game industry. The year’s not quite over, but I’m going to try and take a few weeks off at the end of the …Access-Ability
A list of all blind-accessible videogames. GitHub Gist: instantly share code, notes, and snippets.Gist
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